Monday, February 16, 2015

Of the fifteen members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra, nine pitch in regularly with arranging music the orchestra
plays. Thus giving it the ability to put together a show in a week. When
you get to hear the meticulously arranged compositions like
the ones the orchestra played Sunday afternoon at their annual concert for the University
Musical Society’s jazz series at Hill Auditorium, you’d believe the members responsible for the
arrangements spent way more than a week perfecting the arrangements.

The one hour and forty-five minute concert the orchestra put
on Sunday was the best in recent years. The orchestra, under the direction of
trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, featured some of the works of Charles
Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck. The orchestra didn't play a group of Mingus numbers, for example, followed by a batch of Ellington numbers. Instead, the compositions were interspersed, which gave the overall presentation a freer structure.

The orchestra opened with “Dizzy Moods,” composed by Mingus as an nod to Gillespie. Then the
orchestra moved into Ellington’s “Oclupaca” a movement from his “Latin American
Suite” and Gillespie’s “Fiesta Mojo,” a samba the orchestra added a lot of
swing to.

The concert switched
into a thoughtful and somber state when the orchestra played Marsalis' arrangement of Coltrane’s “Alabama”.
The touching featured solo by saxophonist Paul Nedzela could have caused a convict to
weep. The orchestra showed they’re more than bloodthirsty swingers.

They ventured way out their swing comfort zone on Mingus’ “Los Mariachis (The Street Musicians)”. This number
had more changes than a fashion show. The orchestra played each seamlessly. The standout soloists here were bassist Carlos Henriquez and
drummer Ali Jackson who had the woman seated to my left all worked up as if she was
viewing Internet porn. Jackson had his Mojo working big time.

This was a wonderful concert to sit through. Each musician was in mint form. It was good to hear a female trumpeter, Tanya Darby, cutting up in the
trumpet section.Marsalis has taken a lot of heat over the years for the absence of female musicians in the orchestra. Darby wasn’t featured on any of the
selections, but she fit in nicely in the trumpet section with Marcus Printup, Kenny Rampton and Marsalis.

One of the delights was listening to Marsalis explain the
origins of each composition. Marsalis is a walking encyclopedia of jazz, and
listening to him is like being in a graduate seminar on the music.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

You
could spend damn near a year listing all the jazz alto saxophonists who owe a
debt to bebop icon Charlie Parker. The alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa is
quick to acknowledge Parker was one of his main musical influences.

To this
very day, Parker influence remains a big part of Mahanthappa's playing. He has a
new album that was released nationwide Tuesday. He titled the album “Bird Calls”
and it is a tribute to the late bebop icon. Mahanthappa opted not to put his
spin on some of Parker’s well-known bop classics.

Instead, he infused new
compositions with snippets of Parker’s works, and then he assembled an
excellent group to execute the new material. The result is a Charlie Parker
tribute album unlike any other.

I Dig Jazz emailed a batch of questions to
Mahanthappa about the making of “Bird Calls” and the impact Parker has had on
him as a player. Here’s how Mahanthappa broke it down.

How
has Charlie Parker influenced you?

It’s hard
to sum up in a few sentences.His
innovative spirit and joyful presentation are the most influential traits.He was obviously a genius but the ways in
which I am affected by his work go beyond the music and transcend more towards
a template for overall communication and expression as an artist and as a human
being.

Can you recall your first exposure to Parker's music?

Of course,
it was an album called "Archetypes" that my first saxophone teacher had loaned me.

Has Parker always been your chief influence? If not, where does he rank among
your musical influences?

I don’t
think it behooves anyone to rank ones influences. The palette of impactful moments and
experiences is so wide ranging. He’s a
very strong influence and maybe more importantly, an early one as I first heard
his work when I was very young. Those
artists who first inspire one to play or practice are so significant.

What inspired "Bird Calls"?

The
concept behind Bird Calls was an idea that had been marinating in my brain for
several years. I had always considered
that further dissection of Parker’s work could yield fresh and intriguing
compositional ideas beyond the normal extraction of “licks” that have become
be-bop cliches. "Donna Lee" was the most
blatant example to me of a piece that contains a plethora of modern material
that defies genre and style.

How
long did the album take to make, and were there any obstacles you had to overcome?

The music was constructed in several phases over 1½ years as I had other
projects going simultaneously and did not yet know that I would be recording
this Bird experiment. The process started
with writing a few tunes for a concert at Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s Lost
Jazz Shrines series where I had been asked to put together a program that
somehow paid homage to Charlie Parker.

A
few months later, I presented this project again with a few more tunes at The
Stone in NYC. The band debuted in its
full formation with the album set of material at the Newport Jazz Festival this
past year and we recorded a few days later.
The main obstacle concerned finding myriad modes and strategies to
convey Parker’s musical wizardry while maintaining my own voice as a composer.

Why
did you decide to compose new music instead of playing some of Parker's
signature works?

I
don’t believe playing Parker’s music adequately pays tribute to the gifts that
he bequeathed to us. It’s much more
important to show his lasting impact on the shape of modern music. That is something that goes well beyond the
scope of performing his compositions.

Working
in “chunks of Parker's music” is an over simplification. Each of my
compositions for this album has a unique strategy in how Parker’s music is
utilized. Sometimes it’s rhythmic content of something he played, other times
it might be a snippet of a melody that has been re-contextualized. Each piece is tied to a particular Bird tune
or solo but that tie varies greatly from piece to piece. So keeping that in
mind, it was very challenging to keep my approach fresh through out the album.

Do you see yourself someday making an album of Parker's compositions?

No.
That does not interest me at all.

You have a world-class group in trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, pianist Matt
Mitchell, bassist Francois Moutin, and drummer Rudy Royston. Adam O'Farrill's playing throughout the album was exceptional. How important was he to the
project?

It
was important to me to have a trumpet player on the album, as I wanted to
maintain that front line sound of Bird and Diz (or Miles, Herb Pomeroy,
etc). I had been hearing about Adam for
a while so I did some YouTube research and was blown away. Beyond being a forward-thinking prodigy, Adam
is a wonderful human being and perfect fit for the band. I hope that we will play together for years
to come.

if you had the chance to meet Parker, what would you have said to him?